INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY (WEEK 1)

BY: Rabia Ejaz

LECTURER
(SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES)

FAST - National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Understanding the meaning of Psychology

Psychology as a science

Scope of psychology

Goals of Psychology

Key debates in Psychology

Branches of Psychology
VIDEO

◼ [Link]
Definition:
◼ Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.

◼ The word "psychology" comes from the Greek word psyche meaning "breath,
spirit, soul", and the Greek word logos meaning the study of something.
Thus we can conclude that psychology is the study of soul.

◼ Psychology is an offspring of subject philosophy.

◼ Behavior: Outward or overt actions and reactions (observable)

◼ Example: running, smiling, dancing, talking

◼ Mental Processes: all internal, covert activity of mind (hidden)

◼ Example: thoughts, dreaming, sensations, feelings
Psychology as a Science:

◼ Psychology is a science because it uses the scientific method,

which is a set of procedures designed to establish general
(universal) laws by collecting facts and evaluating theories that
attempt to describe, explain, and predict phenomena.

◼ All sciences have to follow the above mentioned steps.

◼ Psychologist systematically collect and examine data (empirical

evidence) to support or disprove hypotheses (predictions) rather
than depending on common sense.
SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY

◼ Psychology today covers enormous range of scope or fields.

◼ Basic psychology: it is the study of mind and behavior

◼ Applied psychology: methods and findings of scientific psychology

to solve practical problems of human and animal behavior and
experience.
THINK????

◼ How is psychology important in your field?

◼ What makes psychology important in your field?
GOALS OF PSYCHOLOGY

TO TO
TO PREDICT
DESCRIBE TO EXPLAIN CONTROL
(Will it
(What is (Why is it (How can it
happen
Happening?) happening?) be changed?)
again?)
- Observing a -Behavior is -To change a
-Determining
behavior and being behavior from
what will
taking note of understood by an undesirable
happen in the
everything that explaining it. one to a
future
is happening. desirable one.
CONT.…

◼ To describe what is an organism doing?

◼ To explain and understand why organism behave in certain ways?

◼ To predict how organism will behave in the future?

◼ To control behavior or to modify the particular behavior?

KEY DEBATES IN PSYCHOLOGY

1. Nature vs. Nurture

2. Conscious vs. Unconscious Mind
3. Observable behavior vs. internal mental Processes
4. Free will vs. determinism
5. Individual Differences vs. universal Principles

❖ These key debates are used to understand how culture, ethnicity, and race influence
behavior.
1. NATURE VS NURTURE

◼ Heredity vs environment
❖ How much people's behavior is due to their
genetically determined nature
VS
❖ How much is due to the influences of the
physical and social environment in which a
child is raised
2. CONSCIOUS VS. UNCONSCIOUS MIND

How much of our behavior is produced by

forces of which we are fully aware
and
How much is due to unconscious activity
– mental processes that are not accessible to
the conscious mind
3. OBSERVABLE BEHAVIOR VS. INTERNAL MENTAL PROCESSES

◼ Psychology should solely be concentrating Psychology should focus on unseen thinking

on behavior that can be seen by outside processes because according to cognitive
observers
OR psychologist what goes on inside a person’s
◼ Behavioral psychologists think that the only mind is critical to understanding behavior.
source of information is behavior that can
be observed directly
4. FREE WILL (CHOICES) VS. DETERMINISM

◼ How much of our behavior is due to ◼ How much is produced by factors beyond that
choices made freely by an individual? individual’s voluntary control?

◼ We are free to choose our actions ◼ The assumption that everything that happens has a
OR cause or determinant in the observable world.
◼ Example: child born in a poor family, will live a
poor life.
◼ GENETIC AND ENVIRONMENT
5. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES VS. UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES

◼ Focus on the uniqueness of every

individual.
◼ Based on cultural and societal norms and
◼ Every person’s behavior is a reflection of OR values.
their distinct and special individual
qualities.
◼ E.g.: learning style
BRANCHES OF PSYCHOLOGY

◼ Clinical psychology
◼ Counselling
◼Sports psychology
◼ Developmental psychology
◼ Social psychology ◼Forensic psychology
◼ School and Educational psychology
◼Health psychology
◼ Industrial and Organizational
psychology
TOPIC 2 WEEK 1
THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF
PSYCHOLOGY
SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS

◼ Before the age of scientific inquiry all good and bad manifestations beyond the
control of human kind were regarded as supernatural.
 EARLY DEMONOLOGY

◼ The doctrine that a semi autonomous or completely autonomous evil being such as the
devil may dwell within a person and control his or her mind and body is called
demonology.
TREPHINING
◼ People thought that psychological problems
are caused by evil spirits.
◼ To allow those spirits to escape from a
person’s body the ancient healers chipped a
hole in patient’s skull with crude
instrument.
 GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

◼ Early Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato,

and Aristotle explored topics such as pleasure, pain,
knowledge, motivation, rationality, and mental
illness—topics often discussed in psychology today.

◼ Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, posed fundamental

questions about mental life: What is consciousness?
Are people inherently rational or irrational? Is there
really such a thing as free choice?
HIPPOCRATES

◼ Hippocrates, often called the ‘father of medicine’,

lived around the same time as Socrates.
◼ He was deeply interested in physiology, the study of
the functions of the living organism and its parts.
◼ He made many important observations about how
the brain controls various organs of the body.
◼ These observations set the stage for what became
the biological perspective in psychology
17TH CENTURY STARTS

◼ In the 17th century, French mathematician and philosopher

René Descartes theorized that the body and mind are
separate entities. This concept came to be known as dualism
◼ English philosopher John Locke
◼ According to Locke, at birth the human mind is
a tabula rasa, a blank slate on which experience
‘writes’ knowledge and understanding as the
individual matures.
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY

◼ The field of psychology emerged as a scientific discipline in

the 19th century, but its roots go back to ancient
philosophy.

◼ Wilhelm Wundt established the first

psychological laboratory at the University of
Leipzig in Germany in 1879. Wundt relied on
introspection to study mental processes.
◼ Father of Modern Psychology
◼ Introspection refers to observing and recording
the nature of one’s own perceptions, thoughts,
and feelings.
◼ Examples of introspections include people’s reports of how heavy they perceive an object to be and
how bright a flash of light seems to be. The introspective method was inherited from philosophy, but
Wundt added a new dimension to the concept. Pure self-observation was not sufficient; it had to be
supplemented by experiments.
◼ Wundt was important because he separated psychology from philosophy by analyzing the workings of
the mind in a more structured way, with the emphasis being on objective measurement and control.
◼ For example, participants would be exposed to a standard stimulus (e.g. a light or the sound of a
metronome) and asked to report their sensations.
◼ His work focused on consciousness – or the awareness of immediate experience.
◼ Wundt's theory were developed and promoted by his one-time student, Edward Titchener, who
described his system as Structuralism.
 STRUCTURALISM

◼ Edward Titchener, believed that the task of

psychology was to analyze consciousness
into its basic elements. These elements
would include ideas like sensations,
emotions, and images.
◼ These investigations were based on
introspection by trained subjects– careful,
systematic self- observation of one’s own
conscious experience.
FUNCTIONALISM

◼ Functionalism became popular with the publication of

Principles of Psychology in 1890 by William James.
◼ Functionalism is the idea that psychology should focus on
the function or purpose of consciousness rather than its
structure.
GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
◼ Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), and Wolfgang Köhler
(1887–1967) founded Gestalt psychology in the early 20th century.
◼ The whole is different from the sum of its parts.
◼ Our perception or understanding of objects is greater and more meaningful than
the individuals elements that make up our perceptions.
◼ When trying to make sense of the world around us, Gestalt psychology suggests that
we do not simply focus on every small component. Instead, our minds tend to
perceive objects as part of a greater whole and as elements of more complex
systems.

◼ This school of psychology played a major role in the modern development of the
study of human sensation and perception.
SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939)

◼ Austrian physician who founded the

psychoanalytic approach to
psychology.
◼ Freud developed a theory based on
the existence of the unconscious.
◼ According to him emotional and
behavioral disturbances were based
on personal conflicts on an
unconscious level.
◼ At the center of Freud’s theory is the concept of the
unconscious – the thoughts, attitudes, impulses, wishes
,motivations, and emotions of which we are unaware.
◼ Childhood’s unacceptable (forbidden or punished)
wishes are driven out of conscious awareness and
become part of the unconscious, where they continue
to influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
◼ Unconscious thoughts are
expressed in dreams, slips of the
tongue, and physical mannerisms.
BEHAVIORISM
◼ John B. Watson, in 1913 and others ascribing to behaviorism, argued that nearly all behavior is
a result of conditioning and the environment shapes behavior by reinforcing specific habits.
◼ It stated that scientists should only study observable behavior and that consciousness should
be abandoned because ultimately consciousness and perceptions are private events and cannot
be objectively verified.
◼ This means that psychology would suffer from a lack of reliability.
◼ Top names:
◼ B.F Skinner
◼ Ivan Pavlov
HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE

◼ Humans are capable of incredible

acts of creativity, selflessness & high
levels of spirituality.
◼ Free will
◼ Main figures:
◼ Carl Rogers , Abraham Maslow
COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

◼ Focus on Mental processes

◼ Perceiving, remembering, reasoning,
deciding, and problem solving
◼ Only by studying mental processes can
we fully understand what organisms do.
 SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

◼ Sociocultural theory is an emerging theory in Psychology

that looks at the important contributions that society
makes to individual development.
◼ Sociocultural theory focuses not only how adults and peers
influence individual learning, but also on how and
attitudes affect how learning takes place. cultural beliefs
◼ This theory stresses the interaction between developing
people and the culture in which they live.
◼ Sociocultural theory also suggests that human learning is
largely a social process.
 ECLECTIC APPROACH

◼ Selecting and adopting information from many

different sources rather than relying on one
perspective.
◼ The end